


Connection

by cuneifire (orphan_account)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 01:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20001481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/cuneifire
Summary: There are seven billion people in this world, and yet there’s only two of them.(England is many things. Technologically competent isn’t one of them. France shares the sentiment.)





	Connection

He walks past a man. “Shit, sorry-“ on his phone, eyes glued to the screen. Doesn’t even notice England’s presence- which is fine, perfectly so, doesn’t matter.

England’s got his eyes to the sky, shoving through the streets like it’s a race or a fight, because there’s two million people in Paris and he’s only looking for one.

Turn, twist, corner. An old man watering his small garden, eyes seeped in with age and exhaustion. A young girl, bobbling through the streets with earphones plugged in and the world tuned out. A tree, towering in his vision of the sky. A man almost runs into it.

England slips through the streets easily; he sometimes thinks that, aside from France, he’s the one who knows these streets best, but they keep changing, keep turning unfamiliar when he’s not looking.

He’s nearly hit a total of four times alongside one singular street, has a few elbows nearly hit his jaw (thank god for centuries of quietly honed reflexes), has a few people glance at him, disinterested. A handful of centuries ago he’d have warranted more than suspicion- he dresses like a foreigner, walks the streets as thought he doesn’t know them, even if he does. But the Paris of now is different, in a way he can’t keep track of. Here, he fits in, somehow- they’ve somehow become accustomed to more than just Englishmen, here.

The stumbles through the streets, so by the time he’s at the address (an old house, strong architecture and quiet lawn and coins tossed on the streets and all) his tie had come undone.

He rings the bell, leans on the door until it falls open and he stumbles back, not surprised but more so smiling.

“France,” he says, meeting his (possibly former) mortal enemy’s eyes with a grin and stepping inside, not even purposely stomping dirt on the carpet. France, in turn, seems to appreciate that, nodding to him wordlessly.

There’s a table next to the window with the blinders drawn, a tray of tea (his) and coffee (France), pastries (his, so long as France isn’t looking) and books piled up in a skewed stack right aside the windowsill. It’s simple, somehow, in that way France has a tendency to hide that he can be, and it makes England absolutely incapable of not grinning.

France sits down, flips open a book, and England soon joins him. There’s no words other than the ones written on paper.

They don’t do this often, give or take every few months. He pours milk into his tea, watches France sip his own mug with a slight smile on his face, lean back into the old wooden frame of the chair.

France had once told him that out of his houses, this was his favourite. England could see why.

In all the chaos of the ever-changing world around them, it felt good to have a constant; a piece of your puzzle you knew would always be there, without fail.

And for England, those pieces consisted of book, tea, and France.


End file.
